


Rain Ross and the Battle of Hogwarts

by RoSH (RoSH95)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 7th Book, Astral Projection/Dream Selves, F/M, Hogwarts, New characters fuck up the storyline, POV Original Character, Prophesies, but not a whole lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoSH95/pseuds/RoSH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rain Ross has never known her real family. All she knows is her life in San Francisco with her adoptive brother Zach, a pureblood wizard. When Rain finally gets to live out her dream of going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, it is nothing like what she expected. Somehow, the people living in the United States have managed to escape the Wizarding War. However, if Voldemort ascends to power, it is likely they will not escape...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Girl in the Water

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a story that I posted on Wattpad about a year ago. Its my second fanfiction, and I'm really proud of it. Recently, I was reading through my copy of it, and I noticed a lot of problems with it. I was always planning to go back and edit it, so I'm gonna post the new edits here. Hope you like it!

**The Girl in the Water**

Zach loved the ocean. He always had, ever since he was little. As an eleven year old, about to be sent off to school in England, he still did.

It was a cool, misty day, hardly one for going to the beach, but Zach didn’t care. He still begged his parents to take him to the beach.

They weren’t going to take him that day. They were expecting a visitor, who was supposed to have arrived by then. Zach’s parents were slightly worried about this, but Zach couldn’t understand why. Most visitors simply apparated on the front porch. He didn’t understand why the visitor couldn’t just apparate. He was too young to understand.

Zach begged and begged his parents to take him to the beach, and finally his mother complied. While his father stayed at home to wait for the visitor, Zach and his mother went to the beach.

There were dark clouds in the sky, and Zach hoped it didn’t storm. He played happily in the sand, despite the miserable day, before becoming bored. He then wandered off down the beach in search of seashells.

As they were in San Francisco, a dangerous city for women and children, Zach knew it was unwise to wander too far from his mother. He always kept within her eyesight, never going too far away; never going beyond the peninsula to the stretch of beach that lay beyond, out of his mother’s sight.

Zach walked all the way to the tip of the peninsula and looked off the small cliff into the water below. On the other side, there was a sloping path that led down to the other beach.

It was completely empty except for a small and battered looking lifeboat. Curiosity drove Zach down the path and towards the boat. He completely forgot about his mother.

The little boat had holes in the sides of it, as though it had skidded across the water for several yards. There were also strange scratches and other markings in the wood.

Zach approached the boat cautiously and peered inside. Curled up on the floor of the boat was a little girl. She looked to be no more than four years old, and her golden hair was matted with mud and something that looked sinisterly like blood. Her royal purple robes were torn and stained red. She had bright blue eyes the color of sapphires and, under her right eye, she had a perfect teardrop shaped birthmark.

Zach felt a deep and protective emotion well up inside of him as he observed the child shaking and crying on the bottom of the boat. He carefully approached the little girl, who shrank away from him.

“It’s okay,” Zach soothed her. “My name is Zach. I’m here to help you.”

The little girl’s startlingly blue eyes were wide with fear, but she gave a very tiny nod and allowed Zach to lift her out of the boat.

“Where’s mommy?” the little girl asked, looking up into Zach’s eyes.

“I--I don’t know,” Zach said.

“I want mommy!” she bawled, and tear sprung to her eyes.

“I don’t know where your mommy is,” Zach said gently. “Please... don’t cry.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Zach had a sudden burst of inspiration. If he could get her talking, maybe he could find out more about her so they could help find her parents and she would calm down.

“What’s your name?” Zach asked, kneeling down in front of the little girl.

“Ari-Ariana,” she sniffled tearfully.

Then, her eyes widened as if she had suddenly remembered something horrific and Ariana’s panicked sobs turned into screams of terror.

Zach nearly jumped away from Ariana, but he instead pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly, rubbing her back. This helped somewhat, for it seemed to calm her at the same time as it muffled her screams. The last thing Zach wanted was to attract attention to him and the little girl when they were so far from his mother.

After what seemed like hours, Ariana finally quieted down.

“How old are you?” Zach asked, trying to keep her distracted as he began to walk her down the beach.

“A-almost f-four,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“When’s your birthday?”

“July thirty-first,” she said, sounding proud to know that information.

Suddenly, they were interrupted by a loud and angry voice. They had made it past the peninsula and Zach’s mother, Diana, had swooped down on him like a hawk.

“Zachary Ryan Ross, where on _Earth_ have you been?!” she demanded.

Ariana gave another squeak of terror and hid behind Zach.

“I found a girl,” Zach explained. “I found a girl in the water.”

Diana’s eyes fell on Ariana and the anger in her face melted away almost instantly. Her face was rather gentle and soft when she was not angry. Her caramel colored hair framed her heart shaped face, giving her a gentle and motherly look.

Perhaps it was the color of her hair that was so similar to Ariana’s or her motherly expression, but the little girl ran out from behind Zach and hugged his mother’s legs.

Diana kneeled down and petted Ariana’s head with the expression of one who has done it many times before.

“Where are your parents?” she asked Ariana gently.

The little girl only shook her head.

Zach said, “She told me her name is Ariana and--” but then he was cut off as Ariana burst into another fit of screams.

“What do we do?” Zach asked his mother over the noise.

She scooped Ariana into her arms and set off down the beach, saying, “We better take her home and get her cleaned up. Then we can try to locate her parents.”

Zach trotted after his mother, keeping his eyes fixed on Ariana’s contorted and tearstained face.

“Don’t cry, little Raindrop,” he said to her. “Please don’t cry.”

By the time they got home, Ariana had stopped crying again. She seemed perfectly cheerful and content with Zach and Diana. As it seemed to be the sound of her name that triggered the fits, they had agreed to stop using it. Zach had started calling her ‘Raindrop,’ and his mother called her ‘Sugar.’

They took Ariana inside and Diana went to talk to his father, Troy, while Zach took Ariana upstairs for a bath. He felt that, as he had been the one to find her, his should be the one to care for her.

Pulling off her bloodstained clothes, Zach saw a perfect crescent shaped wound that stretched from the left side of her belly button to the middle of her back. The wound was just starting to scar and had turned a silvery white color that seemed to glow in the fluorescent lights.

As he washed her long golden hair, Zach asked, “Where did you get that scar?”

Ariana looked at him, and then the scar blankly. Then she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Once all the mud and blood was washed from her body, Ariana seemed to radiate a pale golden light. Zach gave her one of his T-shirts, a soft blue colored one that made her bright blue eyes stand out even more. The shirt was far too big for Ariana, and she had to wear it as a dress, but she did not seem to mind. She was all smiles.

Zach led Ariana downstairs, and heard his parent’s voices in the drawing room.

He approached the door curiously—Ariana was still taking her sweet time getting down the stairs—and listened.

He heard his father say, “...still hasn’t come. She told us she would be here in seven days’ time. It can’t have taken more than five days for her owl to reach us, and now it’s been three days past then.”

“Do you think she got lost?” his mother asked.

His father sighed.

“I don’t know, Diana. I have a bad feeling about all this.”

Ariana tottered into the room, having made it down the stairs, and Zach followed, trying not to look as though he had been eavesdropping.

“I think someone is getting tired,” Diana crooned as Ariana clambered up onto the couch beside her.

It was true. Ariana’s eyelids were drooping and she was yawning.

“Don’t get too attached to her,” Troy said sternly. “You know we can’t keep her.”

“Oh, phooey,” Diana laughed, combing Ariana’s wet hair with her fingers. “It’s just one more child. And, besides, where else would she go? You know how those orphanages are, she would be miserable there. And I doubt she would fit in there anyways, I mean, you saw her robes. She’s definitely not a Muggle...”

She trailed off, glancing at Zach.

He didn’t know what his mother meant by Ariana’s robes. He did, however, know that he wanted Ariana to stay.

“Can she stay?” he pleaded. “Please? I promise I’ll take care of her!”

“Zach,” his mother said, glancing at his father, “she’s not like a pet. Taking care of a child requires a lot of responsibility. Besides, you’re going off to Hogwarts in September. You won’t be able to care for her then.”

“Then _you_ will take care of her while I’m gone,” Zach said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

Both of his parents laughed. Zach didn’t get the joke.

“We can keep her for now,” his mother said. “But, if another family comes looking for her, then we have to hand her over.”

Zach jumped for joy.

He had a new little sister that was his to care for. He vowed that he would never let anything bad ever happen to her.

He didn’t know at the time that his vow would become a very difficult promise to keep in years to come.


	2. Rain Ross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter of my newly edited Rain Ross and the Battle of Hogwarts! The chapter title is linked to this story on Wattpad, if you want to read it before the edits. Hope you like it!

[ **Rain Ross** ](http://www.wattpad.com/story/4088057-rain-ross-and-the-battle-of-hogwarts-harry-potter)

It was a clear August morning in San Francisco. On the outskirts of Vista Del Mar, there was a pretty black house, surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges. 396 Seal Rock Drive looked as normal as every other house on the street, yet the residents of the little black house were anything but. Indeed, the neighbors often noticed strange happenings about the house. Owls were often spotted swooping around the house, and there were sometimes loud bangs near the house. Of course, the hedges around the house hid the front door from view, so the neighbors never saw the people who lived there appearing out of thin air.

Yes, the young man and woman who lived in 396 Seal Rock Drive were very strange people. They had moved into the house about six years past, and had lived there peacefully ever since. The man claimed that the young woman was his sister, but, thought the neighbors, if this was true, why didn’t she live with their mother? The woman was also school age, but she was never seen going off to school with the other children who lived in Vista Del Mar.

Of course, this was because the residents of 396 Seal Rock Drive were a witch and wizard. The young man was not really the woman’s brother, but her guardian, as he had adopted her when he was only eleven years old.

Thirteen years ago, the young man, who was only a boy then, had discovered a toddler; she had been washed up on the shore of the beach in a broken lifeboat. He took the child to his parents, begging them to let him keep her. His parents discouraged him, saying that he would be going off to school in London that year, but he was persistent and they finally agreed.

The boy’s name was Zachary Ryan Ross, also known as Zach. He named his new little sister Rain, after a teardrop shaped birthmark beneath her right eye. He had also debated naming her Luna, after the crescent shaped scar on her hip, but finally decided against it, thinking that Rain would suit his new sister better.

Rain grew up to be a blossoming young woman, but she preferred to live like a boy, keeping her unnatural beauty hidden. She felt that beauty did not suit her. She also knew that it was unwise to be beautiful in San Francisco, as the gangs often targeted beautiful, young women.

Rain was flat chested, which allowed her to wear tighter tops, but she had large, curvy hips, which she hid with baggy boys’ pants. She ran loose in the streets of San Francisco and joined a gang with her adoptive brother. Unknown to her, this gang was really a group of witches and wizards. Rain also did not know she had been adopted into a family of purebloods from the wizarding world.

At the time, Rain lived with her adoptive parents, Troy and Diana Ross, in an ocean blue house, 1291 Rivera Street, Sunset District, San Francisco. Though Zach spent his school years attending a private school in London, Rain grew very attached to him, in a way she had never done with Troy or Diana. When Zach finished school at age 17, he moved to the house on Seal Rock Drive, taking Rain with him.

By the age of 10, Rain had gotten her first tattoo. Unlike most children, however, who often got tattoos they regretted as they got older, she had chosen a tattoo that represented her life. It was the image of a key in the shape of a snowflake. The snow represented how her origins and her past was hidden from her, while the key showed that she had access to the knowledge, but was too afraid to seek it.

A year later, Rain discovered a way to learn more about her origins. She received a letter from a school of magic. It was the same school Zach had been going to before her. The letter said;

HOGWARTS SCHOOL  
 _of_ WITCHCRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore  
 _(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,  
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

Dear Miss Ross,                                                                                                                                      
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School   
of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.  
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.            
Yours sincerely,                                                                                                                                     
 _Minerva McGonagall_                                                                                                                              
 _Deputy Headmistress_

Naturally, Rain had been terribly frightened of the thought of leaving her brother to go to a school so far away. Zach contacted the headmaster and asked for a way to ensure that Rain got her education.

It was decided that Rain would study magic through a sort of online class. The headmaster would send her letters by owl of her weekly assignments, which she would then submit to him through letters by owl. If she was required to show her progress by performing spells, Zach would take a picture of her performing the spells and, as pictures in the wizarding world move, this was the perfect solution for her problems.

Rain ordered her supplies from Diagon Alley, a place that Zach informed her would be a wonderful place to visit someday. She bought her wand at a wand shop in the United States, not nearly as renowned as Ollivanders in London, and was chosen by a lovely wand, Hazel, twelve and a half inches with a Dragon Heartstring core. She purchased her wand and began to learn eagerly about the wizarding world.

Rain quickly discovered that she was a wonderfully clever witch. She was exceptionally gifted at Potions. Zach suspected that it was because her culinary skills were extraordinary as well. Based on her personality and qualities, Headmaster Dumbledore informed Rain that she would be placed in Gryffindor house when she finally did decide to attend Hogwarts School.

Rain spent six years learning the “online” way. However, at the end of her sixth year, Rain was informed that she would be required to attend Hogwarts the next year, due to a change in rules. It was then that Rain got her second tattoo—this one on her left shoulder blade, opposite the first—of a white lion with the sun in its mouth. The lion symbolized courage—as well as her house—which Rain knew she would need, and the sun symbolized Rain’s need to find out about her heritage.

~

It was the thirteenth of August, and Rain was asleep in her bed, her red and gold blankets draped over her, and one leg dangling off the side. Her room was painted red and gold, symbolizing that she belonged to Gryffindor house, and there were posters of Quidditch teams and wizard bands. The floor was a mess, if that said anything about the occupant of the room. A trunk laying open in the middle of the floor, clothes strewn about, looking like they had literally exploded out of the trunk. An orange tabby cat was curled up on the pillow at the head of the bed, sleeping as soundly as his owner.

Down in the kitchen, a young man with jet black hair and silver-blue eyes was reading a newspaper. Beside him was another stack of newspapers, each of them as strange as the last. The pictures were _moving_. The people in the pictures were waving and smiling up at the ceiling. The one that Zach was reading said,

**ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBERED  
** by Elphias Doge

            I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day at Hogwarts. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsider. I had contracted dragon pox shortly before arriving at school, and while I was no longer contagious, my pockmarked visage and greenish hue did not encourage many to approach me. For his part, Albus had arrive at Hogwarts under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year previously, his father, Percival, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.  
            Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in Azkaban) had committed this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refused to speak of the sad business, though many attempted to make him do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise his father’s action and assumed that Albus too was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knew Albus would attest, he never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, his determined support for Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years.  
            In a matter of months, however, Albus’s own fame had begun to eclipse that of his father. By the end of his first year he would never again be known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged to be his friends benefited from his example, not to mention his help and encouragement, with which he was always generous. He confessed to me in later life that he knew even then that his greatest pleasure lay in teaching.  
            He not only won every prize of note that the school offered, he was soon in regular correspondence with the most notable magical names of the day, including Nicolas Flamel, the celebrated alchemist; Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian; and Adalbert Waffling, the magical theoretician. Several of his papers found their way into learned publication such as _Transfiguration Today_ , _Challenges in Charming_ , and _The Practical Potioneer_. Dumbledore’s future career seemed likely to be meteoric, and the only question that remained was when he would become Minister of Magic. Though it was often predicted in later years that he was on the point of taking the job, however, he never had Ministerial ambitions.  
            Three years after we started at Hogwarts, Albus’s brother, Aberforth, arrived at school. They were not alike; Aberforth was never bookish and, unlike Albus, preferred to settle arguments by dueling rather than through reasoned discussion. However, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brothers were not friends. They rubbed along as comfortably as two such different boys could do. In fairness to Aberforth, it must be admitted that living in Albus’s shadow cannot have been an altogether comfortable experience. Being continually outshone was an occupational hazard of being his friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable as a brother.  
            When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the world together, visiting and observing foreign wizards, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedy intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus’s mother, Kendra, died, leaving Albus the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my departure long enough to pay my respects at Kendra’s funeral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a younger brother and sister to care for, and little gold left to them, there could no longer be any question of Albus accompanying me.  
            That was the period of our lives when we had least contact. I wrote to Albus, describing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from narrow escapes from chimaeras in Greece to the experiments of the Egyptian alchemists. His letters told me little of his day-to-day life, which I guessed to be frustratingly dull for such a brilliant wizard. Immersed in my own experiences, it was with horror that I heard, toward the end of my year’s travels, that yet another tragedy had struck the Dumbledores: the death of his sister, Ariana.  
            Though Ariana had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming so soon after the loss of their mother, had a profound effect on both of her brothers. All those closest to Albus—and I count myself one of that lucky number—agree that Ariana’s death, and Albus’s feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, he was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore.  
            I returned home to find a young man who had experienced a much older person’s suffering. Albus was more reserved than before, and much less lighthearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ariana had led, not to a renewed closeness between Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement. (In time this would lift—in later years they reestablished, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ariana from then on, and his friends learned not to mention them.  
            Other quills will describe the triumphs of the following year. Dumbledore’s innumerable contribution to the store of Wizarding knowledge, including his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom he displayed in the many judgments he made while Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore’s triumph, and its consequences for the Wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  
            Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say, but my loss is as nothing compared to the Wizarding world’s. That he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met him.

The picture at the headline was one of a wizened old man with a crooked nose and crescent shaped spectacles. Zach frequently glanced up to Rain’s room above him as he read, muttering, “Dumbledore... _Dumbledore_... Could it be?”

On top of the pile beside him, there was another newspaper. This one read,

**DUMBLEDORE--THE TRUTH AT LAST?**

            Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation. Stripping away the popular image of serene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita Skeeter reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the lifelong feuds, and the guilty secrets that Dumbledore carried to his grave. WHY was the man tipped to be Minister of Magic content to remain a mere headmaster? WHAT was the real purpose of the secret organization known as the Order of the Phoenix? HOW did Dumbledore really meet his end?  
            The answers to these and many more questions are explored in the explosive new biography, _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_ , by Rita Skeeter, exclusively interviewed by Betty Braithwaite, page 13, inside.

Beside this one, was the page it indicated, having been pulled out of the rest of the paper.

            In person, Rita Skeeter is much warmer and softer than her famously ferocious quill-portraits might suggest. Greeting me in the hallway of her cozy home, she leads me straight into the kitchen for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes without saying, a steaming vat of freshest gossip.  
            “Well, of course, Dumbledore is a biographer’s dream,” says Skeeter. “Such a long, full life. I’m sure my book will be the first of very, very many.”  
            Skeeter was certainly quick off the mark. Her nine-hundred-page book was completed a mere four weeks after Dumbledore’s mysterious death in June. I ask her how she managed this superfast feat.  
            “Oh, when you’ve been a journalist as long as I have, working to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the Wizarding world was clamoring for the full story and I wanted to be the first to meet that need.”  
            I mention the recent, widely publicized remarks or Elphias Doge, Special Advisor to the Wizengamot and longstanding friend of Albus Dumbledore’s, that “Skeeter’s book contains less fact than a Chocolate Frog card.”  
            Skeeter throws back her head and laughs.  
            “Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him a few years back about merpeople rights, bless him. Completely gaga, seemed to think we were sitting at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling me to watch out for trout.”  
            And yet Elphias Doge’s accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed in many places. Does Skeeter really feel that four short weeks have been enough to gain a full picture of Dumbledore’s long and extraordinary life?  
            “Oh, my dear,” beams Skeeter, rapping me affectionately across the knuckles, “you know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word ‘no,’ and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People were queuing to dish the dirt on Dumbledore anyway. Not everyone thought he was so wonderful, you know—he trod on an awful lot of important toes. But old Dodgy Doge can get off his high hippogriff, because I’ve had access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for, one who has never spoken in public before and who was close to Dumbledore during the most turbulent and disturbing phase of his youth.”  
            The advance publicity for Skeeter’s biography has certainly suggested that there will be shocks in store for those who believe Dumbledore to have led a blameless life. What were the biggest surprises she uncovered, I ask?  
            “Now, come off it, Betty, I’m not giving away all the highlights before anybody’s bought the book!” laughs Skeeter. “But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is in for a rude awakening! Let’s just say that nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the Dark Arts in his youth! And for a wizard who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he wasn’t exactly broad-minded when he was younger! Yes, Albus Dumbledore had an extremely murky past, not to mention that very fishy family, which he worked so hard to keep hushed up.”  
            I ask whether Skeeter is referring to Dumbledore’s brother, Aberforth, whose conviction by the Wizengamot for misuse of magic caused a minor scandal fifteen years ago.  
            “Oh, Aberforth is just the tip of the dung heap,” laughs Skeeter. “No, no, I’m talking about much worse than a brother with a fondness for fiddling about with goats, worse even than the Muggle-maiming father—Dumbledore couldn’t keep either of them quiet anyway, they were both charged by the Wizengamot. No, it’s the mother and the sister that intrigued me, and a little digging uncovered a positive nest of nastiness—but, as I say, you’ll have to wait for chapters nine to twelve for full details. All I can say now is, it’s no wonder Dumbledore never talked about how his nose got broken.”  
            Family skeletons notwithstanding, does Skeeter deny the brilliance that led to Dumbledore’s many magical discoveries?  
            “He had brains,” she concedes, “although many now question whether he could really take full credit for all of his supposed achievements. As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had already discovered eight uses of dragon’s blood when Dumbledore ‘borrowed’ his papers.”  
            But the importance of some of Dumbledore’s achievements cannot, I venture, be denied. What of his famous defeat of Grindelwald?  
            “Oh, now, I’m glad you mentioned Grindelwald,” says Skeeter with a tantalizing smile. “I’m afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Dumbledore’s spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell—or perhaps a Dungbomb. Very dirty business indeed. All I’ll say is, don’t be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they’ve read my book, people may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!”  
            Skeeter refuses to give any more away on this intriguing subject, so we turn instead to the relationship that will undoubtedly fascinate her readers more than any other.  
            “Oh yes,” says Skeeter, nodding briskly, “I devote an entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story, but there is no question that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Potter from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy’s interests—well, we’ll see. It’s certainly an open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence.”  
            I ask whether Skeeter is still in touch with Harry Potter, whom she so famously interviewed last year: a breakthrough piece in which Potter spoke exclusively of his conviction that You-Know-Who had returned.  
            “Oh, yes, we’ve developed a close bond,” says Skeeter. “Poor Potter has few real friends, and we met at one of the most testing moments of his life—the Triwizard Tournament. I am probably one of the only people alive who can say that they know the real Harry Potter.”  
            Which leads us neatly to the many rumors still circulating about Dumbledore’s final hours. Does Skeeter believe that Potter was there when Dumbledore died?  
            “Well, I don’t want to say too much—it’s all in the book—but eyewitnesses inside Hogwarts castle saw Potter running away from the scene moments after Dumbledore fell, jumped, or was pushed. Potter later gave evidence against Severus Snape, a man against whom he has a notorious grudge. Is everything as it seems? That is for the Wizarding community to decide—once they’ve read my book.”  
            On that intriguing note, I take my leave. There can be no doubt that Skeeter has quilled an instant bestseller. Dumbledore’s legions of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.

The clock above the doorway chimed six o’clock, and Zach folded his newspaper carefully. He then packed up the large stack of newspapers beside him into a small drawer which looked too small to contain them. However, they all fit inside neatly and Zach closed the little drawer and locked it with a tiny silver key. He hid the key behind the clock, and made his way to the stairs.

Meanwhile, upstairs, a soft snoring sound came from beneath the sheets where Rain slept peacefully. Of course, the peace could not last. Zach threw open the door with a loud bang, startling the cat on the pillow and causing it to leap off the bed and hide beneath it, but Rain did little more than snort and roll over. She slept on, undisturbed. Zach picked his way across the girl’s messy room until he stood beside her bed.

“Rain!” He said, shaking her roughly, “Rain, for God’s sake _get up_!”

Rain rolled over and looked at Zach through half-shut eyes and said, “No.”

“Rain,” Zach warned, “if you don’t get up this minute, I’m going to jump on you.”

Rain ignored him and rolled over, drawing the blankets over her head as she went. Zach stood over her a little longer. Then, true to his word, he jumped on top of the jumbled mess of blankets and the girl that slept within. There was a loud shriek, followed by howling laughter as Rain emerged from the blankets and rolled out of bed.

“Don’t!” she cried, leaping away from him as Zach tried to grab her and tickle her, “I’m up, _I’m up_!”

“Good,” Zach snorted, “You better _still_ be up by the time breakfast is ready. I’m making pancakes, your favorite.”

Zach sauntered out of her room, leaving Rain alone. She yawned and stretched and looked at the bed, wondering if she could catch a few more minutes of sleep before Zach came back up to get her. She decided against it, knowing that Zach would give her a very rude awakening if he caught her back in bed.

Instead, Rain pulled on a red shirt that said “Crazy Cat Lady” in gold letters with a picture of the Gryffindor lion underneath. She had designed the shirt herself. Rain also dragged on a pair of baggy black jeans with gold chains hanging from the belt loops on both sides. She laced up her black combat boots and slipped her well-worn leather jacket over her arm. Then, she thundered down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Rain burst into the kitchen just as Zach was taking the first, golden brown pancake off the griddle. He set it on a plate and handed it to Rain, who promptly sat down at the table to eat. She poured a blanket of syrup all over the pancake and dug in.

“Mmm,” Rain mumbled through a mouthful of pancake, “delicious.”

“All pancakes are delicious in your opinion, Rain,” Zach chuckled, sitting across from her with his own plate.

“Why did you have to wake me up so early today?” Rain asked, glancing at the clock that told her it was only a quarter past six.

“We’re going to visit Diagon Alley to get your school things,” Zach replied with a smirk, “Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No,” Rain said, rolling her eyes. “How are we going to get there? Are we going to apparate?”

“Obviously.”

“Awesome. I really need to get more practice.”

“You’ve already got your license,” Zach pointed out.

“I know,” Rain shrugged it off, “but I haven’t done it in a while. I’ll end up splinching myself if I go too long without practice.”

“Apparating is like riding a bike, idiot,” Zach teased. “Once you learn how, you never forget.”

Rain stuck out her tongue in response.

They finished their breakfast and got ready to leave. Rain didn’t have anything to bring with, so she was all set. Zach grabbed a large black silk coin purse, which jingled merrily in his cloak pocket.

Taking Rain’s arm, they stepped out onto the doorstep, from which they could not see the street, and disapparated on the front step. Miles away, on the other side of the world, they landed on the doorstep of the Leaky Cauldron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? You like it? The story is only BARELY getting started at this point ;)
> 
> I probably won't be posting another chapter edit for a few days, as Alternia University (my Homestuck fanfic) is currently my first priority. I'll try to post again on Friday, May 30th, but I don't know how busy I'll be.

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? This chapter is really just a prologue for the rest of the story, so sorry its kind of short. What did you think about Zach finding Ariana? About him wanting to keep her? About his desire to protect her?


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